One Trick Changes the Power

The Dragon Zombie sank steadily into the swamp.

It was even heavier than I'd anticipated.

The more it struggled, the deeper it went.

Its trapped legs were already half-submerged, severely limiting its movement.

Could we win by just letting the whole thing sink? The thought crossed my mind, but it was an undead.

It didn't need to breathe, drink, or eat, and it would keep moving until its body was destroyed.

That meant I'd have to maintain the spell until Elza's purification destroyed it completely, and sustaining magic over this large an area for that long wasn't realistic, even with magic stone support.

The Dragon Zombie's resistance intensified.

The mud clung to its legs, locking them in place.

It didn't care. It kept trying to tear itself free.

The ground shook. At this rate, it was going to tear itself free, dragging the whole swamp up with it.

Meanwhile, Azu leapt onto the Dragon Zombie's bones and headed for the skull.

The Dragon Zombie was completely skeletal now, but a mass of red mana pulsed where its eyes had been.

That was almost certainly the power source animating the corpse.

It tried to stop Azu by lashing its tail, the only part not trapped in the muck, but she dodged every swing and reached the skull.

The red mass of mana sat deep within the eye socket. Azu stood literally right in front of it.

She raised her sword, wrapped it in mana, and drove it in with a single thrust.

The red mana scattered and dissipated, and the Dragon Zombie, which had been thrashing moments ago, went still.

Without resistance, the massive skeleton slowly sank into the swamp.

(Is it… over?)

For all that frenzied struggling, the ending felt almost anticlimactic.

Undead might shrug off physical damage, but with a weak point that blatantly exposed, it was no wonder it went down easily.

The magic stone's effect expired and the spell cut out.

Ground that had been turned to swamp stayed that way even without the spell.

The swamp stopped spreading, and the sinking body came to a halt partway down.

It had been a grueling fight, but it seemed to be settled.

Just as I was thinking we could manage surprisingly well as long as we focused on stalling, even against a massive Dragon.

The swamp began drying out at an alarming rate.

In an instant, cracks spread across it like land parched by endless drought.

"Alexia-san, did you do something?!"

"That wasn't me!"

Azu bolted the moment she heard my answer.

She must have sensed the danger.

The drought-like phenomenon wasn't limited to the area I'd turned into a swamp. It was spreading outward.

As if the Dragon Zombie were draining every drop of moisture from the surroundings.

But the Dragon Zombie itself showed no visible change.

I picked up a handful of soil. It crumbled apart instantly, spilling through my fingers like sand.

It was exactly like desert sand.

I had no idea what was happening.

The soldiers, who had been on the verge of a victory cheer, were shaken as well.

"The purification is still going. It's not over yet."

The moment Elza spoke, the red mass of mana that Azu had supposedly destroyed reformed within the eye socket.

So much for anticlimactic. Apparently, that hadn't been the end of it.

The Dragon Zombie, now reanimated, pulled free of the bone-dry earth with ease.

I tried to turn the ground beneath it to mud again with earth and water magic, but the completely desiccated soil absorbed the water and the spell fell flat.

"What is going on?! It wasn't doing any of this before. What even is this thing?"

"Looks like it wasn't just a simple zombification after all."

"This isn't the time for 'after all'!"

Altering the terrain with water magic was beyond me in these conditions.

I threw up an earth wall in desperation, but a wall made of loose sand had no structural integrity and couldn't even slow it down.

… And come to think of it, it was hot.

The sand-like ground. This strange heat.

I felt like I'd experienced something like this before.

The Dragon Zombie smashed through the soldiers' makeshift barricades one after another.

Once the last barricade fell, nothing stood between it and the city walls.

Azu and the soldiers attacked to divert its attention, but unlike before, it didn't spare them a glance.

I burned through magic stones, hurling one attack spell after another.

I was landing solid hits, but against an undead, each one only slowed it a little. Before long, the city walls were almost within its reach.

I grabbed a battleaxe that was embedded in the ground.

"Elza, how much longer?"

"Just a little more. I can finish before dawn."

Dawn…

Before I knew it, the pitch-black night sky had begun to lighten.

Sunrise was near.

Not much longer.

I'd fight as a frontliner now, not support from the rear.

Most of the soldiers were wounded by this point, and Azu was the only one still fighting tooth and nail to hold it back.

With the walls so close, she'd already unleashed the apostle's power, and each of her blows was devastating.

She'd already severed one of its legs, cutting its mobility.

Unable to ignore Azu with the apostle's power unleashed, the Dragon Zombie simply kept thrashing in place.

I joined up with Azu and used fire magic to coat both my battleaxe and her sword in flames.

I wasn't sure how effective it would be, but it had to add something.

"I'm out of magic stones, so I'm joining the melee."

"That helps. I can't keep this up much longer as is."

"The weak point in its eye still seems the same. But I wonder if just attacking it will make it regenerate like before. The skull's shielding it and magic can't reach inside."

"If we hit it with a powerful spell directly, it might work. Honestly, that's about all we can do. I'll handle things, so blast it in there."

"Understood. I'll back you up."

We dodged the tail as it swept along the ground, trying to take us and everything else with it.

Then we climbed onto a leg bone as it came stomping down and sprinted together toward the head.

The Dragon Zombie shuddered, trying to shake us off like swatting flies, but that wasn't nearly enough.

We reached its back in no time, then its shoulder, then the skull.

It turned its open mouth toward us, trying to blast us with miasma, so I threw up a wind barrier.

But this time, black flames were mixed in with the miasma.

Plain miasma could be deflected with wind, but the black fire was eating through my barrier at an alarming rate.

"Azu, now!"

"Yes!"

Just before the wind barrier shattered, we dove sideways.

Azu sprinted straight for the skull, poured mana into her blade, and brought it crashing down on the forehead.

An impact that made the air tremble, then the Sealed Sword Grungaus's effect activated. Bone cracked from the forehead down to the bridge of the nose, shattering apart.

The recoil sent Azu flying.

"The rest is up to you!"

I answered her fading voice in my heart.

I ran for the Dragon Zombie's exposed eye socket.

There, with the skull broken open, the red mass of mana sat unguarded.

The strongest thing I had was fire magic, obviously.

Condense it and detonate it for maximum power.

… But somehow, that alone didn't feel like enough to finish this thing.

I compressed fire magic in my free left hand.

Then I layered wind magic over it as a shell.

When the fire detonated, the wind magic would amplify the blast and intensify the concussive force.

And the wind would channel the explosion's energy into a single point.

If this worked, it should have enough power to obliterate a mountain.

"If you're dead, stop loitering around here and go to sleep already."

I poured every last drop of mana into firing the combined fire and wind spell.

The calibration was off and it nearly detonated prematurely, but I managed to give it directionality. The power was more than sufficient.

The instant the spell struck the red mana, I threw myself backward.

A beat later, the blast wave caught up and slammed me into the city wall.

I coughed, all the air forced from my lungs.